“People who are at ease mock those in trouble. They give a push to people who are stumbling.”

Across the country, someplace today is being “occupied”. We happened to be in NYC this past weekend for a Memorial Service of our friend’s son and decided that while we were there to go see what was up with the Occupy Wall Street movement and live-in. It was not what I expected (smaller and less organized) and I really couldn’t tell what will be the outcome, if any, from the protesters. What is evident and worth noting is that people are angry, and since they can’t pinpoint who to be angry with, they are lashing out at an institution and socioeconomic classes that are not their own. They are doing what we all do when we get angry, we first blame someone else. This is what we do in business too often, we wait to see who is in trouble and then we get on that band wagon. We “occupy” until we get our way, or until someone listens. The problem with this is that it doesn’t always solve the problem, in fact it may just cause another problem. It’s hard work to not just go after the obvious target, but instead to search for the root problem and go solve that. That’s what we need to be doing.

In our lives, and our work, where we are to be examples, we have to be careful that we don’t become occupiers too. It is human nature to jump in and mock others and to give a nudge to those who are already stumbling. But, we are to be the opposite. We are to defend those who are in trouble and we are to lift up, take home, care for, and provide the help for those who have fallen to get on their way. We are living in a wacky time, but imagine a world, and a workplace, where we don’t allow the troubled and the downtrodden to be walked over or kept down, instead imagine a place where we stood over them and did all we could to be sure that they found their way upward and onward. We may not be able to immediately solve what is happening in the “occupying” world, but we can manage and solve the problems that we have control over and see each and every day at work. Today, let’s not take the easy way out, but instead give a hand to someone who is stumbling.

Reference: Job 12:5 (New Living Testament)